What is a good LTIR in construction?
Lost Time Injury Rate strips the recordable log down to the injuries that actually cost a shift. It is the number underwriters read first, because it measures severity, not paperwork. Here is what it means, how it is calculated, the benchmarks that matter, and how it differs from TRIR and DART.
Lost Time Incident Rate
LTIR = (lost-time cases × 200,000) ÷ hours worked. The 200,000 is 100 employees × 2,000 hours a year, so the result reads as lost-time cases per 100 full-time workers. The gauge shows 2 lost-time cases across 500,000 hours: (2 × 200,000) ÷ 500,000 = 0.8. Better than the sector average, but every one of those cases is a worker who did not come back the next morning.
What counts as a lost-time injury
A lost-time case is a work-related injury or illness where the worker misses at least one full scheduled shift after the day the injury occurred. The day of injury itself does not count. A laceration treated with stitches where the worker is back on the next shift is recordable for TRIR but is not a lost-time case. A sprained ankle that keeps a laborer home for three days is both. That distinction is the whole point of the metric: LTIR ignores the paperwork severity of a case and asks one question, did this injury take a person off the job?
Because the bar is higher, LTIR numbers are smaller than TRIR numbers for the same crew, and a single case moves the rate more. Track it alongside hours worked and the raw case count, never as a standalone decimal.
The benchmarks that matter
| Band | LTIR | Who runs here |
|---|---|---|
| Best-in-class | under 0.3 | Mature programs where near-misses get closed before they become injuries; the target on most owner-mandated high-hazard work |
| Top quartile | 0.3 – 0.5 | Contractors with a working return-to-work program and fast corrective-action closure |
| Better than average | 0.5 – 1.0 | Solid programs that still lose a shift or two a year per 100 workers |
| Industry average | ~1.0 | The construction sector midpoint for days-away cases (NAICS 23) |
| Needs attention | above 1.5 | Reactive programs; expect underwriter questions and prequalification friction |
Bands are for days-away cases in the construction sector and shift by trade. Steel erection, roofing, and demolition carry higher baselines than finish trades, so compare against your own trade mix before judging a subcontractor.
A worked example
A general contractor logs 2 lost-time cases across 500,000 hours worked in a year. LTIR = (2 × 200,000) ÷ 500,000 = 0.8, better than the sector average. The same two cases on a smaller job of 220,000 hours read 1.82, which lands in the needs-attention band on an identical safety record. The denominator does the damage: small crews look volatile on any rate metric, and LTIR is the most sensitive of them because the numerator is so small. Read at least a rolling 12 months before treating a small contractor's LTIR as a trend.
Now add the recordable log. Suppose the same 500,000-hour year had 6 total recordables, of which 4 involved days away, restricted duty, or transfer, and 2 involved days away. TRIR is 2.4, DART is 1.6, LTIR is 0.8. Same year, three different stories: frequency, disruption, and severity.
TRIR counts every OSHA-recordable case, including a medical-treatment case where the worker is back the next shift. DART narrows that to cases with days away, restricted work, or job transfer. LTIR narrows it again to days away only. Each metric is a subset of the one before it, which is why LTIR is always the smallest number of the three and why it is the one underwriters and owner prequalification teams read first. A contractor can carry a middling TRIR built on stitches and X-rays, or the same TRIR built on fractures and weeks off work. LTIR tells the two apart.
LTIR is a lagging number. You bring it down the same way you bring TRIR down: drive near-miss reporting up, close corrective actions fast, and keep a working return-to-work program so a restricted-duty case does not become a lost-time case. For the full side-by-side, including EMR, read TRIR vs EMR vs LTIR vs DART, or start at the construction safety KPIs pillar.
LTIR questions
What is LTIR?▾
LTIR (Lost Time Injury Rate) counts only the work-related injuries serious enough that the worker could not return for their next scheduled shift. It is normalized per 200,000 hours worked, so it reads as lost-time cases per 100 full-time employees per year. It is the severity-focused cousin of TRIR.
How is LTIR calculated?▾
LTIR = (lost-time cases × 200,000) ÷ total hours worked. Two lost-time cases across 500,000 hours worked gives (2 × 200,000) ÷ 500,000 = 0.8. Only cases with at least one full day away from work after the day of injury count in the numerator.
What is a good LTIR in construction?▾
The construction sector runs close to 1.0 lost-time cases per 100 full-time workers. Below 1.0 is better than average, 0.5 or lower is top-quartile, and under 0.3 is best-in-class. Underwriters and owner prequalification teams often read LTIR before TRIR because it isolates the injuries that actually cost shifts.
LTIR vs TRIR vs DART?▾
TRIR counts every OSHA-recordable case, including medical-treatment cases with no time lost. DART counts cases with days away, restricted duty, or job transfer. LTIR is the narrowest of the three: only cases with days away from work. Read them together: TRIR is frequency, DART is disruption, LTIR is severity.
POD computes your LTIR automatically
Grab the free safety inspection template to standardize what your crews capture. POD counts the lost-time cases against the hours in your reports and plots your LTIR live, per project and across the portfolio.